Benchmarks of the leaked Android 4.3 for Nexus 4 show an overall performance improvement

The Android 4.3 system dump for the Nexus 4 from yesterday is still not perfectly ready for daily use, but it’s now much easier to install. You can follow instructions here to flash it (using any recovery) to your Nexus 4, it shouldn’t delete your data (once again, proceed at your own risk and do a backup for peace of mind).

Why would you risk it when the official update could be just days away? Android 4.3 brings few changes over 4.2.2, but they are important – and better performance is seemingly one of them.

Native performance is virtually unchanged (as measure by CFBench), but that’s hardly a surprise. The Dalvik VM has been retooled and apps that don’t use the NDK (that’s the majority of them) should see a performance bump.

CFBench – native

Higher is better

Nexus 4 (Android 4.2.2)22876

Nexus 4 (Android 4.3)22342

CFBench – Java

Higher is better

Nexus 4 (Android 4.3)7390

Nexus 4 (Android 4.2.2)6872

Android 4.3 supports OpenGL ES 3.0 and seems to include other changes to the graphics stack as 3D performance in GLBenchmark 2.5 has gone up by several frames in both on and off screen tests. It’s a pretty big difference indeed, but developers will also have to do their part and take advantage of it.

GLBenchmark 2.5 – onscreen

Higher is better

Nexus 4 (Android 4.3)44.0

Nexus 4 (Android 4.2.2)39.0

GLBenchmark 2.5 – offscreen

Higher is better

Nexus 4 (Android 4.3)39.0

Nexus 4 (Android 4.2.2)33.0

Other changes in v4.3 are Bluetooth 4.0 support (until now makers had to roll their own), AVRCP 1.3 support for Bluetooth (basically when you play a song over BT, the phone will transfer artist and song info to the player), T9 in the dialer, new Camera, Gallery and Play Store apps plus the Google Keep app.